@Yukimusha
Sure, but that's entirely subjective. There are plenty of people who would prefer to have translator notes outside the panels explaining something that's translated more literally, and if they're feeling particularly engaged and don't want to read it they can just ignore the notes and chalk whatever they just read up to weird Japanese stuff. There's a line that has to be drawn somewhere between "a weird numbers thing that doesn't really matter as long as you get 'I love you' out of it" and "EAT YOUR HAMBURGERS, APOLLO."
Obviously there are a lot of grey areas, and things that are easier or harder to translate, and I'm not saying this way is bad, but saying stuff like "literal translation isn't good translation" and "this way is better" is entirely subjective.
In this particular case I think it was pretty pointless anyway. Changing it to "an old thing from the 90s when pagers were still a huge thing" means most of your readers won't get it anyway, and heck, if they skip the page at the end you even risk giving people misinformation when they think "oh, 143 means 'I love you' in Japanese for some reason" if they don't notice how the letters match the numbers. As a not-boomer, I certainly didn't get it, and thought it was a literally-translated joke until I got to the end only to find out it was actually 415 in Japanese and 143 was actually supposed to be an English thing.
Considering that explaining it at the end was as easy as:
yo (four) - i (one) - ko(i) (five) = good love
they totally could've just had that next to 415 and it would've explained it just as well. I really don't see how that would be "taking anyone out of the story," certainly not any more than 143 did for people under the age of 40 who don't count letters. It's not like I'm pretending these Japanese high schoolers are actually western and seeing a Japanese number thing that takes a corner of a panel to explain would shatter my perception of it. It's not like reading the shiratori game with romaji in today's chapter of Sukinako ga Megane wo Wasureta made me disengage or lose interest in the story in any way.
Again, this is all subjective. I don't think translating everything literally is always the best way to go. But as they said, there are upsides and downsides to everything, and to imply that always localizing everything is the best approach gets us children asking their parents for jelly-filled doughnuts like Brock was eating on their cartoons and being confused as to why they don't look like balls of rice.
Obligatory thanks to the translators for the hard work, because writing five paragraphs about why I didn't like a decision doesn't mean I want you to stop, and it's a really, really minor complaint.
Sure, but that's entirely subjective. There are plenty of people who would prefer to have translator notes outside the panels explaining something that's translated more literally, and if they're feeling particularly engaged and don't want to read it they can just ignore the notes and chalk whatever they just read up to weird Japanese stuff. There's a line that has to be drawn somewhere between "a weird numbers thing that doesn't really matter as long as you get 'I love you' out of it" and "EAT YOUR HAMBURGERS, APOLLO."
Obviously there are a lot of grey areas, and things that are easier or harder to translate, and I'm not saying this way is bad, but saying stuff like "literal translation isn't good translation" and "this way is better" is entirely subjective.
In this particular case I think it was pretty pointless anyway. Changing it to "an old thing from the 90s when pagers were still a huge thing" means most of your readers won't get it anyway, and heck, if they skip the page at the end you even risk giving people misinformation when they think "oh, 143 means 'I love you' in Japanese for some reason" if they don't notice how the letters match the numbers. As a not-boomer, I certainly didn't get it, and thought it was a literally-translated joke until I got to the end only to find out it was actually 415 in Japanese and 143 was actually supposed to be an English thing.
Considering that explaining it at the end was as easy as:
yo (four) - i (one) - ko(i) (five) = good love
they totally could've just had that next to 415 and it would've explained it just as well. I really don't see how that would be "taking anyone out of the story," certainly not any more than 143 did for people under the age of 40 who don't count letters. It's not like I'm pretending these Japanese high schoolers are actually western and seeing a Japanese number thing that takes a corner of a panel to explain would shatter my perception of it. It's not like reading the shiratori game with romaji in today's chapter of Sukinako ga Megane wo Wasureta made me disengage or lose interest in the story in any way.
Again, this is all subjective. I don't think translating everything literally is always the best way to go. But as they said, there are upsides and downsides to everything, and to imply that always localizing everything is the best approach gets us children asking their parents for jelly-filled doughnuts like Brock was eating on their cartoons and being confused as to why they don't look like balls of rice.
Obligatory thanks to the translators for the hard work, because writing five paragraphs about why I didn't like a decision doesn't mean I want you to stop, and it's a really, really minor complaint.
